UPSTAIRS, NORAH INSPECTED the bedroom. The missing daughter had left behind a bureau of autumn clothes, long-sleeved shirts, jeans, a rainbow of sweaters. Atop a small dish, six smooth pebbles collected from the beach. A pinback button with a dove perched on the neck of a guitar. Another that read McGovern ‘72. From an open pack of Teaberry gum, Norah unwrapped the last stick to find it shattered into terra-cotta shards. Taped on the wall above the bed were watercolor paintings—the woods on a snowy day, a bridge crossing over a roiling river, and a boy with long cascading hair who looked like a teenage Jesus. A crucifix hung above the light switch. On the child's desk lay a ten-year-old issue of Time with a picture of a stern Patty Hearst under the stark banner: APPREHENDED. A pad of blank white paper. Holding it aslant to the morning light, Norah detected the impression of the letters LV on its surface. The only other objects on the desk were four textbooks in brown grocery bag covers on which someone had doodled Wiley over and over, the name interlaced with flowers, hearts, a cobra of many heads. And more carefully drawn, the cryptic logo AOD over a pair of outstretched wings.
Inside the shallow drawer of the desk lay colored pencils pocked in the middle with toothmarks. A bundle of artist's brushes in different sizes, the camel's hair tips hardened into spearpoints. Norah pressed the end of one on the surface of the desk until the tip collapsed, the old paint puffing a cloud of amber dust. Hidden beneath a tangle of rubber bands and paper clips, a pack of cigarettes and a crisp book of matches. She took one of the smokes and put it in her pocket. The side drawers contained an archive of school papers, drawings preserved from all ages, notes, letters, a stray family photograph. She stared at one image of the three of them together beneath an artificial silver Christmas tree: the girl seated in a caneback rocking chair, her mother and father resting a hand each along the top rail, the image torn in two at the father and then taped together again. Buried deep in the jumble was a tablet filled with sketches—faces juxtaposed over desert roads, a girl in a pinafore floating over the horizon, a boy confronting a leopard from his quilted bed. She hid the portfolio under her mattress, saving it for closer study.
The aroma of pancakes rose from downstairs, and an unfamiliar grumble sounded in her stomach. She imagined, below in the kitchen, the woman stirring the batter, setting the table, preparing herself. The time was right for her entrance. Standing on her toes, Norah could just reach the bottom of the mirror by the door. She wet her fingertips in her mouth and combed her tangled hair, straightened her glasses, and practiced smiling. The light was perfect now. She would descend.
As she turned to call for the girl, Margaret was surprised to see Norah already on the threshold, dressed in her runaway daughter's tartan nightgown. In the morning light, they lost their place in time, for just a moment.
“So,” Norah said, “you'll let me stay?”
5
Sean Fallon waited until nearly all of the other children left Friendship Elementary School, some running in knots for the best seats on the buses, others clumping in pairs and trios to walk. Standing in an alcove, nearly hidden under his parka and scarf, he watched the tough older boys saunter around the corners and disappear. Once safe to move, he pulled up his hood like a spy, hunched his shoulders to settle the weight in his backpack, and commenced the long walk home. Teachers hurrying to their cars paid him little heed. Even the principal nearly ran him over. An elderly man tipped his old-fashioned hat as they passed on the sidewalk, leaving behind an icy wake that made the boy's nose run and snot freeze above his upper lip. The wind blew against his face and through his hair, for the stranger carried winter in his coattails. New snow covered the ragged patches on the ground, softened the dense plowlines at the curbs and corners and the old trails carved along the sidewalks. Sean stopped now and again to trace his name on the powdered hoods of neglected cars, to run his gloves along an iron fence, to gently push the toe or heel of a boot to crack the glassy ice collected in miniature culverts and depressions. There was no need to hurry. His mother would not return from work for a few hours longer, and his father never came home.